Looking for a $16.5 million lottery jackpot winner

The Iowa Lottery is on the lookout for the winner of a massive $16.5 million Hot Lotto jackpot.

All that is known about the winner is that on December 29, 2010, a lottery player walked into a Quik Trip in Des Moines and purchased a winning ticket with the numbers: 3-12-16-26-33 and Hot Ball 11, according to ABC News.

Months later, no one has yet made a claim for the huge prize.

“It’s just so sad to just continue to see this sit there and sit there,” Mary Neubauer, a spokesperson for the Iowa Lottery, said.

“It’s sad because someone legitimately won this huge prize. It would make so much of a difference in someone’s life.”

Unclaimed lottery tickets rake in millions of dollars worth of revenue for state governments. In 2009, the dollar amount of reported unclaimed prizes across the United States totalled a massive $496 million, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. That figure would be even higher because some states did not report figures.

In Indiana, a lottery winner missed out on a $51.7 million prize by failing to claim on their winning Powerball ticket in 2002, while a Florida Lotto jackpot winner missed out on $53.7 million in 2003 when their winning lottery ticket expired 180 days after its purchase.

Neubauer said lottery winners typically claim their prize within the first few weeks of the winning draw.

“Usually it’s a few days to maybe a few weeks because we always encourage our winners to take their time and talk to a financial planner or an attorney to assist with the big decisions when you’re about to become an instant millionaire,” she said.

The $16.5 million jackpot is currently the second-highest unclaimed lottery prize in the US. In the state of Oregon, lottery officials are still waiting for a winner to claim their $21.8 million prize. The lottery player purchased the winning Megabucks ticket in Portland on July 30.

If a winner fails to claim their prize within the next three months, the $16.5 million jackpot will be the largest unclaimed prize for the Iowa Lottery. The prize money will return to the 14 states and the District of Columbia based on the portion of tickets sold, with spending determined on a state-by-state basis.

While the clock is ticking, lottery officials are urging people to check everywhere for the winning ticket before time runs out.

“It could be somebody from anywhere,” Neubauer said.

Got any lottery tickets lying around?